Georgetown University, my alma mater, informed alumni this week that they will require Covid-19 vaccines and booster shots for attendees of the upcoming reunion celebration for the classes of 1970, 1971, 2015 and 2016. I sent the following letter to the Office of Alumni Relations to share my outrage at this policy, which I’ve reprinted below:
To whom it may concern,
My name is Amber Athey and I am a graduate of the College, Class of 2016.
I am writing to express my deep disappointment and concern that Georgetown will be requiring all attendees of its fifth and fiftieth reunion celebration to have received a Covid-19 vaccine and booster shot.
It is unacceptable that the university will prevent unvaccinated and unboosted alumni from reuniting with their classmates. They spent tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars to attend and graduate from Georgetown. There is no just world in which they should have to undergo an additional medical procedure to attend an event on campus. It is wrong, and it is unscientific.
The CDC has admitted in recent months that the vaccines do not prevent people from catching or spreading the Covid-19 virus. A Danish study found that vaccinated individuals are only 10 percent less likely to spread the Omicron variant within their own household. The primary benefit of receiving a vaccine is to lower the risk of hospitalization and death for individuals who catch Covid. Shouldn’t these individuals get to decide, based on their own risk factors, whether they need this additional protection? Since the vaccines don’t stop or even greatly reduce communal spread, a mandate is moot.
Let me tell you what factored into my decision to not get a Covid-19 booster shot. I received one dose of the Johnson & Johnson shot last year to comply with an employer mandate. At the time, I had to weigh the risk of side effects from the vaccine against my own financial interests. It was a very difficult decision, and, frankly, I regret it. The CDC’s recent admission that vaccinated women saw changes to their menstrual cycle suggests to me that we will learn about more negative side effects from the vaccines as time goes on.
What is most frustrating to me is that I didn’t need a vaccine in the first place. I am twenty-seven years old and do not have any comorbidities. My chance of dying from Covid-19 is less than 0.1 percent, per data of Covid deaths and cases in young adults. I certainly don’t need a booster. The New York Times reported last week that booster shots in young adults “did not seem to add much benefit” in terms of preventing hospitalizations and deaths. Multiple epidemiologists are saying that boosters are unnecessary for young, healthy people.
“I do not think these data support a universal booster rollout for everyone,” Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease expert at Kaiser Health News, told the Times.
“Since the boosters have potential side effects, however rare, it’s important to direct them to the people who will gain a clear benefit,” former FDA officials Philip R. Krause, Marion F. Gruber and Paul A. Offit wrote in the Washington Post.
Multiple vaccine experts and leading epidemiologists expressed further misgivings about the US policy on boosters to the Times. You can read about their concerns here.
There is simply not good scientific evidence to indicate that a vaccine mandate, particularly one that includes mandatory booster shots, is sound public health policy. New York City, despite having one of the strictest vaccine mandates in the country, still has some of the worst Covid outcomes. Everything I laid out here applies to the university’s vaccine mandate for staff and students as well, but I have already directed my concerns about that to the officials in charge of those decisions.
I am sure many unvaccinated and/or unboosted Georgetown alumni still donate their hard-earned money back to the university in good faith. This is the thanks they get? I hope they stop sending you donations. I canceled my annual donation years ago and this has only reinforced my decision to never give the university a cent.
I certainly hope that the Office of Alumni Relations will convene with the university’s public health officials to reconsider this discriminatory and misguided policy related to the fifth and fiftieth reunion celebration.
Thank you,
Amber Athey
Georgetown University COL ’16
